Cease and Desist
by usa123
Summary: Natasha has had enough of Steve's self-destructive tendencies.


Natasha Romanoff stormed through the medical wing of the Serbian CIA base, fully aware that her white-knuckle grip on the IV pole was the only thing keeping her upright. She tried to compensate with her most deadly glare, but judging by the soft looks she was receiving from the staff, she wasn't very successful.

She had come down with food poisoning yesterday afternoon, but despite her insistence that she could finish the mission, she'd woken this morning to find a suite of electrolyte-rich beverage and soft stomach foods around her bed, next to an active earbud. Steve was nowhere in sight.

When he returned, he was bleeding, badly, from a wound she'd heard him take over the comm. She'd attempted to stitch him up herself, but then her stomach had taken another attempt at inverting itself. When she'd been reduced to dry heaving, she'd made the call for the two of them to seek real help, from the CIA team they'd been called in to assist. It went against her better judgement, but unfortunately they were without other options.

In hindsight, it had been unusual for Steve to agree so willingly, a fact she would have realized if she hadn't been trying to keep down yesterday's breakfast.

Now, she rounded the corner of the med wing, and shoved her way through the heavy curtain surrounding Steve's bed.

"This has to stop."

It was telling how tired Steve was that he didn't even flinch as she entered. He remained lying flat on the bed, one splinted arm draped over his eyes, while Anya, the on-call nurse, continued suturing the wound along his ribs. Now that Natasha's vision had straightened out, thanks to the fluids and anti-nausea meds flowing through her IV, she could see that if Steve hadn't dived out of the way when he did, the bullet would have pierced his heart.

At the realization of just how close Steve had come to yet another critical injury—one not even the supersoldier serum would have been able to handle—rage and frustration surged through Natasha's veins. There was a reason Fury had sent the two of them for this retrieval—even if one of them was a bonafide supersoldier. If Steve had just waited for her, she could have clocked the shooter and taken him out before he'd gotten a lucky shot off. Instead, Steve had gone off half-cocked, determined to finish the mission, consequences and personal injury be damned.

She gritted her teeth to keep back the flood of angry words that wouldn't help Steve see reason. It took her a moment to be able to unclench her jaw, certain the onslaught wouldn't escape.

In her silence, Steve finally asked, "What does?" in a voice that was low, lifeless, and saturated with exhaustion. He didn't even look over at Natasha or move his arm away from his eyes as he spoke.

"This," Natasha said, motioning to the curtained-off space around them, not that Steve could see. "The hospital," she then clarified. "You and yet another row of stitches."

There was a spare chair on the far side of where Anya was working, and Natasha all but collapsed into it, hoping that her motion seemed like a purposeful descent, and not her knees giving out. Her stomach churned at the quick change in altitude, but she powered through it, determined to not throw up again. "This is six visits in five missions," she said, once the bout of nausea had been quelled.

"You coul've stitched me up," Steve slurred. Natasha immediately looked up at the bags hanging from Steve's IV pole, hoping the CIA base had read his file and was pumping massive amounts of painkillers into his system. But then she saw the lines around his eyes tighten as Anya started a new stitch, and realized otherwise.

All things considered, Natasha had been hiding her anger fairly well up to this point. This, though, was too much.

If it had been just this one incident, she might have given Steve a pass; a lot had happened since The Decimation. He was obviously struggling to cope as much as she was. But it _wasn't_ just this mission. Steve throwing himself into situations he couldn't control and riding the fine line between reckless and brave had been a running theme since their return from Wakanda. She'd seen glimpses of it on previous missions—before The Decimiation, before Leipzig, before Ultron—but now, his actions were in a league of their own. In his current state, it wouldn't be long before someone got lucky.

Someone today almost had.

With red tingeing her vision, she turned to Anya and asked, in Serbian, "Could you give us a moment?"

The nurse looked up, and must have seen the poorly-concealed murderous expression in Natasha's eyes, since she quickly finished up the last two sutures and peeled off her gloves.

"Find me when you're done," Anya muttered to Natasha before leaving the area.

Natasha waited until the curtain had been pulled closed, then began, "You shouldn't have gone in alone."

Steve _finally _lowered his arm so he could look—very unhappily—at Natasha. "I didn't have a choice."

"You did. You could have waited for me, or asked for someone else to back you up."

"They were heading out," Steve said listlessly. "If I'd've waited, we would have missed our window." He then slid his arm back over his eyes. "Now, the 084 off the streets and safe in Coulson's undead hands." There was a sharp note to the end of his sentence, one that resonated in Natasha's own heart, even all these years after her boss revealed he was still alive.

But she didn't have time for those feelings now. So she compartmentalized, shoving the unwanted emotions into a box deep within her chest, and refocused on the task at hand.

"What about in Bishkek where you got thrown out of an eighth story window, without your shield or a parachute?" she asked, her anger surging as she remembered how her heart had practically forced its way out of her chest with worry, as she had run around the corner to find Steve crumpled on the ground, not moving. "Chengdu where Hydra dropped a building on you, because you didn't have a proper exit plan?" Digging him out of the rubble with only her bare hands, until more help could arrive. "Dar es Salaam where you thought charging the guy with the massive Chitari weapon without your shield was a good idea?"

The evidence was littered all over Steve's skin: the bruises, burns, breaks and lacerations. All of them should have healed by now, if Steve had been getting more than a few hours sleep a night, and eating more than just the minimum to survive.

As much as Natasha wanted to, she couldn't really begrudge him the first point. Her own dreams were filled of memories of people who had vanished: those she'd loved, those whose company she appreciated, those she'd opened her heart to. So she understood Steve's actions on an instinctual level. But she also knew how much sleep and nutrition a healing supersoldier required, and how Steve, despite everyone's nagging, wasn't even accruing close to those numbers.

"We completed all the missions with no additional casualties," Steve replied, pulling Natasha back to the present.

She had expected a response like that, but was still shocked by the lack of emotion in his words. "You being in the ICU three times in the last four months is heading toward a pretty big casualty," she snapped.

Steve shook his head. "You'd all be fine without me."

"No. We. Wouldn't."

Steve looked over his arm again, but this time, his eyes were filled with something other than their previous blankness. "Natasha," he began softly, but the Widow cut him off.

"What Thanos did, we had no choice in. But you throwing yourself into these missions without a semblance of your usual planning, _that _we can control. That _you _can control.

"You don't want to do this job anymore, fine. Go buy a place, start a farm, open a food bank, I get it. But you can't ask me to watch you do everything short of killing yourself, and continue to call it a success."

"You don't understand," Steve said, as he started to push himself upright. Instantly, his face drained of all its color, and he slumped back, barely managing to brace himself on the wall to avoid hitting his head. Natasha found herself reaching out to steady him, though a small part of her wanted to let him fall... Maybe it would straighten out whatever was sludging through his brain.

She didn't, however, and caught his flailing elbow with her free hand.

A few minutes and a lot of obscenities later, they managed to get Steve leaning against the headboard of the bed.

"They don't want me," he panted, once he'd sort of caught his breath. "They want the guy who got up on stage and punched Adolf Hitler in the jaw. The guy who took down SHIELD after he discovered it was rooted in Hydra. The guy who got on stage after Avengers' missions and told the world we'd be there when the world needed us next."

He looked over at Natasha and shrugged his uninjured side. "They want what I can't give. So at least I can give them this."

"Bucky wouldn't want this."

Steve flinched, which drove a sharp knife into Natasha's gut. She held her ground, though, knowing that as painful as those words were, Steve needed to hear them. He was spiraling, and it wouldn't be long before he ran into a situation his abilities couldn't handle. "Sam either."

It was a long moment of uncomfortable silence before Steve responded, "It doesn't matter. They're not here."

"It _does_ matter. Don't you see, Steve? Even if you don't want to be Captain America anymore, the world still needs you. _We_ still need you. You're more than a uniform to us."

This time, Steve's eyes flashed. "I don't need you to stroke my ego," he snapped, more alert than Natasha had seen him in months. "I have the situation under control." He swung his legs over the far side of the bed, wincing as he did so, then pulled the IV from his hand. "I'll meet you back at the quinjet."

He wasn't getting off that easily. It took Natasha a bit to climb to her feet, but even in her condition, she beat Steve to the edge of the dividing curtain. She planted herself in front of it, looped her elbow around her IV pole, crossed her arms over her chest, and dug in her heels. "We're not done," she grunted, as the world lurched dangerously.

Steve stuttered to a stop, swayed before he could catch himself, then glared at her. "I _will_ move you."

"You could, but you won't."

She saw the small flash in Steve's expression, and knew he had come to the same realization; she plowed forward before he could change his mind. "Steve, we need to talk about this."

"No, we don't." Steve took another step forward and reached out his hand to slip by her.

Leaning heavily on her IV pole, Natasha slid into the space he was trying to step into. "What happens when I have to bury you, Steve?" She was speaking louder now, and might have even been shouting for all she knew. But she was tired of this song and dance, of this pattern the two of them had fallen into and couldn't escape. "When we finally figure out how to beat Thanos? When we can try to use the Stones to undo what he did? What am I going to tell everyone who's expecting to see you?"

Steve's hand fell to his side and he deflated a little, the angles of his body losing their sharp edges. "It's been three years," he said, not quite making eye contact with her. "I don't think we're going to find anything."

"You have no idea what we will and won't find. After all we've seen the past decade, literally anything is possible." With a rather amazing show of coordination in her current state, she reached out and took his hand. "You just have to be around when we do."

Steve lifted his gaze and looked directly into her eyes. "I'm not trying to kill myself, Nat."

She'd spent enough time with Steve on missions or at the Tower to know he was telling the truth, that deep down he was really just doing the job, at whatever cost. Unfortunately, in their current situation, that reassurance wasn't enough. "You're not exactly keeping it from happening either."

"I'm completing missions."

"Tell me that one more time, Steve, and I will not be responsible for my actions."

Steve's gaze fell, and he stared intently at the tile floor for a long moment. "I'm doing my best," he finally said.

Natasha tightened her grip on his hand, hoping the gesture said the words she wasn't able to vocalize.

"You need to take better care of yourself," she then said, as she motioned to his bruised and battered torso and his newly splinted wrist. Steve's head dipped to follow her path, and when he met her gaze again, his expression was neutral.

"We need you Steve, whether you like it or not."

His expression fractured, taking the rest of his resistance with it. "I don't know what to do," he said, so softly it was little more than a whisper.

Natasha stepped forward and wrapped him in a one-armed hug, feeling the minute tremors running down his spine. "None of us do. What Thanos did isn't like anything we were ever trained for. But we have to keep trying."

After a beat, she felt Steve nod against her shoulder. In the grand scale of the last few years, this victory was infinitesimal, but for Natasha, it was anything but. The world needed Steve Rogers, whether he wanted to accept that or not—but not the Hitler-punching poster boy, or the Star Spangled Man With A Plan. The world needed Steve Rogers, who would lead the charge down any viable path they found, who would struggle and fail and be human, but who wouldn't give up if there was even the slightest chance of defeating Thanos, or maybe, just maybe, reversing the Decimation.

But that was a problem for another day. Right now, all that was in her control, was stumbling with Steve back to his bed and reattaching his IV.

"Have you thought about grief counselling?" she asked, as she sat where Anya had been, her hand still resting on Steve's.

He looked over at her in surprise. "You went?"

She nodded.

"Did it help?"

"No. But that doesn't mean it won't help you."

Steve stared at her for a moment, then shrugged lopsidedly. "I'll consider it."

It was as good as Natasha could expect for now.

"Rest, Steve," she said, as she began rubbing circles on the back of his hand with her thumb.

He was going to need it. They had a long fight ahead of them.


End file.
